The (Not-So) Amazing Race: An NTWF Story (Chapter SIX Up!)
Jul 29, 2014 20:21:08 GMT -5
Gelquie, Killix, and 16 more like this
Post by Avery on Jul 29, 2014 20:21:08 GMT -5
This is an NTWF story. It's about a race. A really cool race. If you gave me permission to be in it... you might be in it. If not, you can still read it and laugh and point at your hapless fellow forumers. I'm not sure exactly how often I'll update-- probably once every few days if I'm at a fast writing clip, a bit slower than that otherwise. If you didn't give me permission but still want to, there's a thread in the Splatterboard; I've already got most if not all of the major characters, but cameos are still a thing, and you can be that thing, everyone.
Comments are welcome. In fact, comments are ADORED WITH UNDYING ADORATION THAT IS SO ADORING. So comment. Even if just to say: "I am not literally a bird, Carrie, how uncool."
Anyway. Without further ado!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Comments are welcome. In fact, comments are ADORED WITH UNDYING ADORATION THAT IS SO ADORING. So comment. Even if just to say: "I am not literally a bird, Carrie, how uncool."
Anyway. Without further ado!
The (Not-So) Amazing Race: An NTWF Story
Chapter One
Chapter One
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Before the Race, I never really understood this saying; I’d always placed it up there with “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush”. It was the sort of thing a person uttered when they wanted to feel smart, or better than you, and on the receiving end of it you were just supposed to stand there and nod, impressed by their clearly innovative wisdom. I’d done a lot of nodding in my time. It’s no use arguing with idiots and their idioms.
But then came the Race, and with it—through it—I arrived at a new sense of clarity. No lunch is really free—there’s always someone fronting the cost—and every person who sashays into hell didn’t start out headed in that direction. As for the bird, well, I never did like them. But if you are an aficionado of avians, then maybe it’s best to cling to the one you’ve already got rather than go off hunting for promised new ones. The free snake at your fingertips isn’t always worth the bite.
I think I might start writing idioms, once I’m out of this hospital.
**
Maybe I should start at the beginning of things. The day of the town hall meeting, the summer’s first.
I guess in most cities, a town hall meeting wouldn’t be much of a draw, populated only by grouchy old men who wanted those kids off their lawn and mothers complaining about speeders in the school zone, but in Entwuff, the monthly gatherings were practically a destination. This probably had something to do with the fact that Entwuff was in the middle of nowhere: sandwiched amid cornfields and wheat-fields and then, for good measure, some more cornfields (sometimes, if you were real lucky, you’d find a barley field thrown in). Combine this with the fact that Town Hall was practically the only building in town with air conditioning, and well, put it this way:
I arrived twenty minutes early, and still I didn’t find a seat.
I wasn’t the only one left standing. By the time the clock hit noon and the mayor stood from her seat atop the small stage and then ambled to the microphone, the room was nearly packed to capacity. At least I’d gotten a place beneath an air vent; I basked in the cold air that blew down and caressed my neck.
“You think there’ll be free punch afterward this time?” a voice whispered into my ear as the Mayor adjusted the mic.
I turned and discovered my next-door neighbor, Birdy. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t see any.”
Birdy sighed. “These meetings have really gone downhill since Councilman Stal passed that extraneous spending measure.”
“I thought you voted for that measure,” I reminded her.
“Well, yes. But I really did like the punch.”
Up on the stage, the mayor cleared her throat, cutting mine and Birdy’s conversation to a close. We both turned to watch her. In the past few years, her hair had gotten greyer, her posture a bit more... stooped. Mayor Patricia Jade, affectionately know as Mayor Pat, had run the town of Entwuff for as long as I could remember—and as long as anybody else could remember, as well, except for maybe Councilman Stal. She was a fixture around town much like the fields and the General Store down on Main Street, running these monthly meetings like clockwork. An hour each, no more, no less. She did an expert job of fielding complaints and concerns, even when the topics at hand were controversial. She was always ready with an answer to your question, a resolution to your grievance. Sometimes you’d hear on the news about mayors who went rogue—locking constituents into ballrooms or scandalously turning out to be rocks. Literal rocks. But not Mayor Pat.
“Good afternoon,” she greeted.
“Good afternoon!” we returned.
“Thank you all for coming today. It sure is a hot one out there, huh?” She faux-fanned herself as the town nodded its assent. “Now, if you’ll notice, I haven’t passed out an agenda as I generally do at the start of each meeting. Why is this, you ask? Because today, we’ve only one matter of business to attend to.”
“Oh man,” Birdy murmured to me. “I bet Draco and Coaster got into another spat about Draco’s cabbages growing over Coaster’s property line—that took up a whole meeting to resolve last time.”
“But it did get resolved,” I pointed out, as Mayor Pat continued on.
“As you all know,” she said, “I’ve been the mayor of this fine town for many, many years. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. However, as much as I love my job, it’s very taxing, and I’m getting older. I don’t want to resent you lovely townspeople ever, and that is something I very well believe could happen if I were to force myself to spend my golden years as mayor. Therefore, effective one week from today, I’m acceding my post as Mayor of Entwuff to Councilman Stal.”
The room was so silent you could hear your neighbor’s heart beat (literally: Birdy’s heart was hammering so hard that I was crossing my fingers real hard it didn’t come exploding from her chest). Everyone exchanged uneasy glances, not quite grasping the gravity of Mayor Pat’s words. Retiring. She was retiring? It didn’t seem possible. It was like a cat telling you it had decided to stop shedding its fur all over your clothes, or you kid brother informing you he’d decided to become a tree. Sure, an interesting idea, but an unrealistic one. Cats shed, humans aren’t trees, and Mayor Pat was mayor of Entwuff.
That’s just how things were. How they’d always been.
But then she went on: “Of course, I know this is probably a great shock to all of you. But I know that Councilman Stal will be a fine replacement, and you’ll all grow to love him as you’ve grown to love me over the years. And… that leads me to my next point. You are all very dear to me. And I wouldn’t want to leave you without a sort of…” She paused. “… gift. Or, gift might not be the right word, not exactly. But well…” She took a deep breath. “Something you might not know about me is that I’m an investor.”
“An inventor?” asked someone at the front of the crowd, one of the lucky ones who’d managed to snag a seat.
“No, an investor,” Mayor Pat corrected. “I buy stocks. A lot of stocks. And… I’ve done well over the years. Very well. You all may be wondering why this matters for you. Well. I’ve made more money than I ever could possibly use. And so I was thinking, as I discussed my retirement with my family: how could I give back to the community who has supported me for all these years? The idea of donation certainly came to mind, but it didn’t seem right. I didn’t just want to throw money at people; not to mention, selecting whom to donate the money to would have been an impossible decision, and if I’d just split it up all equally, why, none of you would have gotten much at all. Which was what led to me… an idea. A rather strange idea, I must admit, but once it took root in my brain, it wouldn’t let go.” She smiled then, brightly, that smile all of us in Entwuff knew and loved. “A race,” she said. “From here to New Woo City.”
“A… race?” called one of the other standers. I glanced towards them: Pifa.
“Yes,” said Mayor Pat. “I didn’t want the money to go to just one person, so it will be a team race; the teams must have between two and five members, and can be assembled at your choosing, with friends and neighbors of your choosing. Participation is wholly optional, so that those who don’t want to race don’t have to. Over the next week, if you wish to take part, please submit an entry form with the name of your team and its members to my secretary, Chet—you all know Chet!” She pointed at Chet, who was sitting in the front row and gave a hesitant wave. Mayor Pat continued, “Then, because I don’t want this to turn into a madhouse, a lottery will take place precisely one week from today, right here at Town Hall. Ten entry forms will be drawn at random, and the winners will start racing right then and there! There’s one million shinies in a safe in New Woo City. In cities along the way, I’ve left a series of clues with information on where, precisely, that safe is located. The first team to collect all the clues, deduce the location, and arrive there gets it all, to be split between them however they desire.”
“Did you… did you say one million shinies?” Pifa’s voice was practically a squeak.
“Indeed.” Mayor Pat was beaming now, ear to ear.
It was the beam of a woman who didn’t know how she’d just doomed her beloved town, who had no idea of the pandemonium that would slowly build and then unfurl a week from now, when the Race got underway. After all, you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Before the Race, I never really understood this saying; I’d always placed it up there with “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush”. It was the sort of thing a person uttered when they wanted to feel smart, or better than you, and on the receiving end of it you were just supposed to stand there and nod, impressed by their clearly innovative wisdom. I’d done a lot of nodding in my time. It’s no use arguing with idiots and their idioms.
But then came the Race, and with it—through it—I arrived at a new sense of clarity. No lunch is really free—there’s always someone fronting the cost—and every person who sashays into hell didn’t start out headed in that direction. As for the bird, well, I never did like them. But if you are an aficionado of avians, then maybe it’s best to cling to the one you’ve already got rather than go off hunting for promised new ones. The free snake at your fingertips isn’t always worth the bite.
I think I might start writing idioms, once I’m out of this hospital.
**
Maybe I should start at the beginning of things. The day of the town hall meeting, the summer’s first.
I guess in most cities, a town hall meeting wouldn’t be much of a draw, populated only by grouchy old men who wanted those kids off their lawn and mothers complaining about speeders in the school zone, but in Entwuff, the monthly gatherings were practically a destination. This probably had something to do with the fact that Entwuff was in the middle of nowhere: sandwiched amid cornfields and wheat-fields and then, for good measure, some more cornfields (sometimes, if you were real lucky, you’d find a barley field thrown in). Combine this with the fact that Town Hall was practically the only building in town with air conditioning, and well, put it this way:
I arrived twenty minutes early, and still I didn’t find a seat.
I wasn’t the only one left standing. By the time the clock hit noon and the mayor stood from her seat atop the small stage and then ambled to the microphone, the room was nearly packed to capacity. At least I’d gotten a place beneath an air vent; I basked in the cold air that blew down and caressed my neck.
“You think there’ll be free punch afterward this time?” a voice whispered into my ear as the Mayor adjusted the mic.
I turned and discovered my next-door neighbor, Birdy. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t see any.”
Birdy sighed. “These meetings have really gone downhill since Councilman Stal passed that extraneous spending measure.”
“I thought you voted for that measure,” I reminded her.
“Well, yes. But I really did like the punch.”
Up on the stage, the mayor cleared her throat, cutting mine and Birdy’s conversation to a close. We both turned to watch her. In the past few years, her hair had gotten greyer, her posture a bit more... stooped. Mayor Patricia Jade, affectionately know as Mayor Pat, had run the town of Entwuff for as long as I could remember—and as long as anybody else could remember, as well, except for maybe Councilman Stal. She was a fixture around town much like the fields and the General Store down on Main Street, running these monthly meetings like clockwork. An hour each, no more, no less. She did an expert job of fielding complaints and concerns, even when the topics at hand were controversial. She was always ready with an answer to your question, a resolution to your grievance. Sometimes you’d hear on the news about mayors who went rogue—locking constituents into ballrooms or scandalously turning out to be rocks. Literal rocks. But not Mayor Pat.
“Good afternoon,” she greeted.
“Good afternoon!” we returned.
“Thank you all for coming today. It sure is a hot one out there, huh?” She faux-fanned herself as the town nodded its assent. “Now, if you’ll notice, I haven’t passed out an agenda as I generally do at the start of each meeting. Why is this, you ask? Because today, we’ve only one matter of business to attend to.”
“Oh man,” Birdy murmured to me. “I bet Draco and Coaster got into another spat about Draco’s cabbages growing over Coaster’s property line—that took up a whole meeting to resolve last time.”
“But it did get resolved,” I pointed out, as Mayor Pat continued on.
“As you all know,” she said, “I’ve been the mayor of this fine town for many, many years. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. However, as much as I love my job, it’s very taxing, and I’m getting older. I don’t want to resent you lovely townspeople ever, and that is something I very well believe could happen if I were to force myself to spend my golden years as mayor. Therefore, effective one week from today, I’m acceding my post as Mayor of Entwuff to Councilman Stal.”
The room was so silent you could hear your neighbor’s heart beat (literally: Birdy’s heart was hammering so hard that I was crossing my fingers real hard it didn’t come exploding from her chest). Everyone exchanged uneasy glances, not quite grasping the gravity of Mayor Pat’s words. Retiring. She was retiring? It didn’t seem possible. It was like a cat telling you it had decided to stop shedding its fur all over your clothes, or you kid brother informing you he’d decided to become a tree. Sure, an interesting idea, but an unrealistic one. Cats shed, humans aren’t trees, and Mayor Pat was mayor of Entwuff.
That’s just how things were. How they’d always been.
But then she went on: “Of course, I know this is probably a great shock to all of you. But I know that Councilman Stal will be a fine replacement, and you’ll all grow to love him as you’ve grown to love me over the years. And… that leads me to my next point. You are all very dear to me. And I wouldn’t want to leave you without a sort of…” She paused. “… gift. Or, gift might not be the right word, not exactly. But well…” She took a deep breath. “Something you might not know about me is that I’m an investor.”
“An inventor?” asked someone at the front of the crowd, one of the lucky ones who’d managed to snag a seat.
“No, an investor,” Mayor Pat corrected. “I buy stocks. A lot of stocks. And… I’ve done well over the years. Very well. You all may be wondering why this matters for you. Well. I’ve made more money than I ever could possibly use. And so I was thinking, as I discussed my retirement with my family: how could I give back to the community who has supported me for all these years? The idea of donation certainly came to mind, but it didn’t seem right. I didn’t just want to throw money at people; not to mention, selecting whom to donate the money to would have been an impossible decision, and if I’d just split it up all equally, why, none of you would have gotten much at all. Which was what led to me… an idea. A rather strange idea, I must admit, but once it took root in my brain, it wouldn’t let go.” She smiled then, brightly, that smile all of us in Entwuff knew and loved. “A race,” she said. “From here to New Woo City.”
“A… race?” called one of the other standers. I glanced towards them: Pifa.
“Yes,” said Mayor Pat. “I didn’t want the money to go to just one person, so it will be a team race; the teams must have between two and five members, and can be assembled at your choosing, with friends and neighbors of your choosing. Participation is wholly optional, so that those who don’t want to race don’t have to. Over the next week, if you wish to take part, please submit an entry form with the name of your team and its members to my secretary, Chet—you all know Chet!” She pointed at Chet, who was sitting in the front row and gave a hesitant wave. Mayor Pat continued, “Then, because I don’t want this to turn into a madhouse, a lottery will take place precisely one week from today, right here at Town Hall. Ten entry forms will be drawn at random, and the winners will start racing right then and there! There’s one million shinies in a safe in New Woo City. In cities along the way, I’ve left a series of clues with information on where, precisely, that safe is located. The first team to collect all the clues, deduce the location, and arrive there gets it all, to be split between them however they desire.”
“Did you… did you say one million shinies?” Pifa’s voice was practically a squeak.
“Indeed.” Mayor Pat was beaming now, ear to ear.
It was the beam of a woman who didn’t know how she’d just doomed her beloved town, who had no idea of the pandemonium that would slowly build and then unfurl a week from now, when the Race got underway. After all, you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Chapter Two
Chapter Two
“A team of two makes the most sense, I think,” I said to Birdy a while later, as the two of us sat in her kitchen enjoying a cup of tea (there’d been no free punch). “After all, that means we each get the most money.”
“I guess,” Birdy said. “But if the clues are complicated, then that means only two people to puzzle them out. A bigger team gets less money if they win, but a smaller team probably has less of a chance of winning in the first place. Plus,” she added, “you were there for the Q&A, Carrie. Bigger teams get a bigger travel expenditure from Mayor Pat. Which could be helpful.”
“How many do you think, then?” I asked her.
She took a sip of her tea. “I don’t know. Three is a bad number—then it ends up two against one. But five seems too much. So… four, I suppose?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand apiece,” I said. “Not too shabby, still.”
She chuckled. “You could say that.” Another sip. “But who else would we want on our team? I think we need to figure it out fast—before others start grouping off.”
“Hm.” I dumped another spoonful of sugar into my tea. “What about—”
A knocking at Birdy’s sliding glass door, which adjoined the kitchen to the backyard, cut me off; I glanced toward it and discovered Icon, who was my next-door neighbor on the other side. I sighed. Icon was the sort of neighbor who sometimes let you use his swimming pool if you asked real nice, and who gave everyone fruitcakes at Christmastime. He also waved politely whenever he saw you around town, and he didn’t complain much if you let your lawn get overgrown because you came down with a bad case of the Lazies.
But his popularity amongst the neighbors was somewhat degraded by the fact that he kept a practical aviary of birds in a custom-built enclosure on his patio. Birds that seemed to have taken it as their prerogative in life to chirp and caw and screech loudly at all hours of the day and night. This had won him a number of enemies, several exasperated noise complaints, and… one friend. Birdy. Who loved the dang birds, Woo knows why, irony involving her name notwithstanding.
“Come in!” she called to him now, waving him inside.
Icon slid open the door and stamped his feet on the mat. “Please tell me you haven’t assembled a team yet,” he begged in greeting.
“Well, Carrie and I were talking about it right now, actually,” she replied.
Icon only then seemed to notice I was there. The grin on his face melted into a neutral frown. “Carrie,” he said stiffly.
“Four in the morning,” was all I said in reply. Referring to the exotic gold-plumed warbling jay of his that had decided sunlight be darned, 4am was the absolute best time to start its namesake warbling. Or perhaps spluttering would have been a more apt description.
“He can’t help it, it’s mating season.” Icon bristled.
“Then maybe you should find him that mate.”
“But gold-plumed warblers are so rare, there’s not a female in the region—”
“Can you two please stop it?” Birdy grumbled, standing to pour herself another cup of tea. “Carrie, the bird is a bird, it can’t help it. Icon, maybe you should bring him inside so the noise isn’t so loud. Problem solved, voila. Anyway. The Race. We were talking about Pat’s Race, and making teams for it.”
“I want to be on your team, Birdy,” Icon said.
“Minor problem,” I butted in, before Birdy could agree to his proposition. “I’m on her team, Icon. We’ve already decided it. Right, Birdy?”
“Good thing teams can have up to five members, then,” Birdy said.
Icon laughed. “I’m not being on a team with her.”
“I’m glad to hear, because I’m not being on a team with you. So, bye now. Better go round up a team before everyone buddies up. I hear the zoo’s got lots of chicks right up your alley. Literally.” I smiled, pleased with myself.
“Why are you so mean to him?” Birdy sighed.
“Hm, I think the official cause would probably be sleep deprivation by way of yellow-faced warbling bird.”
“Gold-plumed warbler jay,” Icon corrected. “And it’s not first grade, Carrie. It’s not finder’s keepers. Birdy clearly would rather race with me than you, so you can go find a new team. Right, Birdy?”
“If you’re both going to be jerks, I don’t want to race with either of you,” Birdy snapped. As Icon and I had argued she’d been stirring her tea, faster and faster, until finally she reached a dangerous velocity and a splash of the boiling liquid spattered on her forearm. She jumped and swore under her breath (I think that could solidly be considered injury number one1 of the Race).
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Just great,” she muttered, jamming the burn under the kitchen tap and turning on the cool flow of water. As she washed the wound, she went on, “You’re both my friends, and for cripes sake, you’re next door neighbors. Maybe this race would be a good way of helping you both set aside your differences so you can get along in well… life. I think it could really help you both.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Icon asked.
“We’ll all be a team. The three of us.”
“No!” I cried, a trigger reaction. Then: “W-we already established that a team of three is like, the total worst, Birdy. We’d be dooming ourselves from the get-go. I think maybe we should go back to my first idea. The team of two, just you and me—”
“Nope.” Birdy shut off the tap. “I’ve decided. I’m not racing at all unless you’re both on my team.”
“But teams of three—”
“Who said we have to be three? We’ll find a fourth. Someone… ruthless. And smart. Who’ll figure out any clue Mayor Pat could think up.”
“What about my buddy Orinth? He works at the wild animal park—real stand-up guy—”
“Absolutely not!” I interrupted. “You don’t get to pick one of your friends, Icon, you’re the freakin’ interloper in this situation, remember, Birdy and I had a perfectly great team before you showed up. Now, I was thinking maybe Monica, you know, Monica Harr, who lives behind us—”
“She’s called the police on my birds five times!” Icon reminded.
“Exactly.” I smiled.
“Neither of you gets to pick,” Birdy grumbled as she opened a cabinet and pulled out from it a tube of antibiotic cream. “I’m picking.”
“It has to be someone good, though,” Icon said.
“Someone great.”
“Oh, it will be,” she assured us. “We just have to go on a bit of a… trip… to visit her.”
“A trip?” Icon furrowed his brow.
“Yes. To Stallion Hill.”
“Oh. Oh no,” I gasped.
“You’re talking about…”
“Are you crazy, Birdy?”
“She has to be,” Icon grumbled. “I mean, really, Birdy, you can’t be serious.”
“Nope, I’m not crazy. And yes, I’m serious.” She turned to face us both. “I want Komrade Killix for our team.”
1I was unaware until much later of the injury sustained by Kristy, who'd stubbed her toe on the curb during her walk home from Town Hall whilst chasing after a desired teammate who was up ahead of her, and therefore, if you want to be technical about it, probably counted as Injury Number One.
“A team of two makes the most sense, I think,” I said to Birdy a while later, as the two of us sat in her kitchen enjoying a cup of tea (there’d been no free punch). “After all, that means we each get the most money.”
“I guess,” Birdy said. “But if the clues are complicated, then that means only two people to puzzle them out. A bigger team gets less money if they win, but a smaller team probably has less of a chance of winning in the first place. Plus,” she added, “you were there for the Q&A, Carrie. Bigger teams get a bigger travel expenditure from Mayor Pat. Which could be helpful.”
“How many do you think, then?” I asked her.
She took a sip of her tea. “I don’t know. Three is a bad number—then it ends up two against one. But five seems too much. So… four, I suppose?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand apiece,” I said. “Not too shabby, still.”
She chuckled. “You could say that.” Another sip. “But who else would we want on our team? I think we need to figure it out fast—before others start grouping off.”
“Hm.” I dumped another spoonful of sugar into my tea. “What about—”
A knocking at Birdy’s sliding glass door, which adjoined the kitchen to the backyard, cut me off; I glanced toward it and discovered Icon, who was my next-door neighbor on the other side. I sighed. Icon was the sort of neighbor who sometimes let you use his swimming pool if you asked real nice, and who gave everyone fruitcakes at Christmastime. He also waved politely whenever he saw you around town, and he didn’t complain much if you let your lawn get overgrown because you came down with a bad case of the Lazies.
But his popularity amongst the neighbors was somewhat degraded by the fact that he kept a practical aviary of birds in a custom-built enclosure on his patio. Birds that seemed to have taken it as their prerogative in life to chirp and caw and screech loudly at all hours of the day and night. This had won him a number of enemies, several exasperated noise complaints, and… one friend. Birdy. Who loved the dang birds, Woo knows why, irony involving her name notwithstanding.
“Come in!” she called to him now, waving him inside.
Icon slid open the door and stamped his feet on the mat. “Please tell me you haven’t assembled a team yet,” he begged in greeting.
“Well, Carrie and I were talking about it right now, actually,” she replied.
Icon only then seemed to notice I was there. The grin on his face melted into a neutral frown. “Carrie,” he said stiffly.
“Four in the morning,” was all I said in reply. Referring to the exotic gold-plumed warbling jay of his that had decided sunlight be darned, 4am was the absolute best time to start its namesake warbling. Or perhaps spluttering would have been a more apt description.
“He can’t help it, it’s mating season.” Icon bristled.
“Then maybe you should find him that mate.”
“But gold-plumed warblers are so rare, there’s not a female in the region—”
“Can you two please stop it?” Birdy grumbled, standing to pour herself another cup of tea. “Carrie, the bird is a bird, it can’t help it. Icon, maybe you should bring him inside so the noise isn’t so loud. Problem solved, voila. Anyway. The Race. We were talking about Pat’s Race, and making teams for it.”
“I want to be on your team, Birdy,” Icon said.
“Minor problem,” I butted in, before Birdy could agree to his proposition. “I’m on her team, Icon. We’ve already decided it. Right, Birdy?”
“Good thing teams can have up to five members, then,” Birdy said.
Icon laughed. “I’m not being on a team with her.”
“I’m glad to hear, because I’m not being on a team with you. So, bye now. Better go round up a team before everyone buddies up. I hear the zoo’s got lots of chicks right up your alley. Literally.” I smiled, pleased with myself.
“Why are you so mean to him?” Birdy sighed.
“Hm, I think the official cause would probably be sleep deprivation by way of yellow-faced warbling bird.”
“Gold-plumed warbler jay,” Icon corrected. “And it’s not first grade, Carrie. It’s not finder’s keepers. Birdy clearly would rather race with me than you, so you can go find a new team. Right, Birdy?”
“If you’re both going to be jerks, I don’t want to race with either of you,” Birdy snapped. As Icon and I had argued she’d been stirring her tea, faster and faster, until finally she reached a dangerous velocity and a splash of the boiling liquid spattered on her forearm. She jumped and swore under her breath (I think that could solidly be considered injury number one1 of the Race).
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Just great,” she muttered, jamming the burn under the kitchen tap and turning on the cool flow of water. As she washed the wound, she went on, “You’re both my friends, and for cripes sake, you’re next door neighbors. Maybe this race would be a good way of helping you both set aside your differences so you can get along in well… life. I think it could really help you both.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Icon asked.
“We’ll all be a team. The three of us.”
“No!” I cried, a trigger reaction. Then: “W-we already established that a team of three is like, the total worst, Birdy. We’d be dooming ourselves from the get-go. I think maybe we should go back to my first idea. The team of two, just you and me—”
“Nope.” Birdy shut off the tap. “I’ve decided. I’m not racing at all unless you’re both on my team.”
“But teams of three—”
“Who said we have to be three? We’ll find a fourth. Someone… ruthless. And smart. Who’ll figure out any clue Mayor Pat could think up.”
“What about my buddy Orinth? He works at the wild animal park—real stand-up guy—”
“Absolutely not!” I interrupted. “You don’t get to pick one of your friends, Icon, you’re the freakin’ interloper in this situation, remember, Birdy and I had a perfectly great team before you showed up. Now, I was thinking maybe Monica, you know, Monica Harr, who lives behind us—”
“She’s called the police on my birds five times!” Icon reminded.
“Exactly.” I smiled.
“Neither of you gets to pick,” Birdy grumbled as she opened a cabinet and pulled out from it a tube of antibiotic cream. “I’m picking.”
“It has to be someone good, though,” Icon said.
“Someone great.”
“Oh, it will be,” she assured us. “We just have to go on a bit of a… trip… to visit her.”
“A trip?” Icon furrowed his brow.
“Yes. To Stallion Hill.”
“Oh. Oh no,” I gasped.
“You’re talking about…”
“Are you crazy, Birdy?”
“She has to be,” Icon grumbled. “I mean, really, Birdy, you can’t be serious.”
“Nope, I’m not crazy. And yes, I’m serious.” She turned to face us both. “I want Komrade Killix for our team.”
1I was unaware until much later of the injury sustained by Kristy, who'd stubbed her toe on the curb during her walk home from Town Hall whilst chasing after a desired teammate who was up ahead of her, and therefore, if you want to be technical about it, probably counted as Injury Number One.
Chapter Three
Chapter Three
If you drive down Main Street until it turns into a rutted dirt road, and then you drive for some ten minutes more, so far that you’re not even totally sure you’re still in Entwuff city limits (you are), and then you turn left, onto an unmarked muddy trail, and slowly wind down it for another quarter hour or so, you’ll reach a rolling hill. I don’t know if it has an official name, but the locals all call it Stallion Hill, in part because of the wild horses that roam the pastures nearby to it, and partly after some historical figures who lived in the area a very long time ago.
If you climb up the hill, you’ll find a house. Or maybe shack is a more accurate description. It’s got a tin roof, only high-up slit windows, and rumors have it that trip-wires riddle the path up leading to the front door.
The shack was where Komrade Killix lived.
Komrade Killix was sort of an enigma around town, residing in the rural shack atop Stallion Hill for well—as far anyone was concerned, forever. Some called her a survival nut, others thought she was hiding from something—the law, probably. She only showed her face around the proper part of Entwuff once every month or so, upon which she would move around Main Street in a methodical fashion, roving from shop to shop as she assembled on each visit an identical list of wares: canned foods, bags of rice and beans, bar soap, coffee, and toilet paper. Her acquisitions she’d then dump unceremoniously into the bed of her pickup truck before driving back to Stallion Hill. If you tried to talk to her—which most people didn’t, not even the store clerks who rang up her purchases—she wouldn’t ignore you, not exactly, but her voice was always clipped and cool. She rarely smiled and never laughed.
As Birdy, Icon, and I approached Stallion Hill in Birdy’s SUV—the only car any of us owned that could handle the off-road for such a distance—suddenly my neighbor Icon didn’t seem like the worst teammate, after all.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he moaned miserably for the umpteenth time.
“I agree,” I grumbled, as Birdy parked the car at the base of the Hill. “There’s still time to turn around, you know.”
“We’re not turning around.” Birdy pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the car door, stepping out into the muggy afternoon.
“She’s going to say no,” Icon said as he, too, stepped outside; I followed suit, my senses immediately assuaged by the smell of manure and… gunpowder. Gee, that was comforting. Icon added, “She’s going to chase us away and then—OOH!” He pointed wildly at the sky. “Look, look, a pointy-beaked hawk! I haven’t seen one of those in ages!”
“Wow, maybe you can catch it and add it to your orchestra!” I snapped.
“You can’t catch them, they’re endangered,” he said with a knowing nod.
“It was a joke, nitwit—”
“Guys, no. No arguing.” Birdy shook her head. “Now, come on. Up the Hill, I’ll lead.”
On our hike up the Hill, Icon gleefully pointed out a number of other birds that were flying overhead, and I valiantly held my tongue. Birds, birds, birds. Was that all he talked about? Even if Komrade Killix didn’t end the Race before it began for us by, I don’t know, making us disappear forever for trespassing on her property, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could handle Icon for a race from here to New Woo City. That was… hundreds of miles. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. What, was he going to point out every bird from here to there, with complete taxonomy information, nesting trends, and migratory patterns? I would go crazy. Was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars really worth crazy?
… yes. Hell yes.
Alas, this was the answer I came to again and again, as finally we crested the Hill and Komrade Killix’s abode came into view.
“Careful,” I warned. “I’ve heard she has booby traps.”
Birdy rolled her eyes. “Where from, the middle school gossip committee?’
“She’s crazy,” Icon reminded. “I mean, I hate to not completely tear down everything Carrie says, but seriously, Birdy, be careful.”
Fortunately, we made it to the door without any of us being taken out by bear traps or trip-wires. As Icon and I stood hesitantly a few feet back, Birdy loudly rapped on the metal door (what kind of person had a metal door, for Woo’s sake?). When there was no answer after a solid minute, Birdy rapped again. Then again.
“I don’t think she’s home,” I said after the fourth knock.
“Her pickup truck was at the bottom of the hill,” Birdy pointed out. “And—come on, Carrie. It’s Komrade Killix. Where else would she be?”
“Um, guys—”
“Shut up, Icon,” I huffed. “I don’t want to hear about another bird.”
“No, it’s just—”
“A blue-grey-purple crested heron? A shiny hawk? I don’t care.”
“No, but—”
“Seriously, stop!”
“KOMRADE KILLIX IS HERE AND SHE HAS A KNIFE POINTED AT MY THROAT.”
… well, snap.
Both Birdy and I turned to face Icon, who wore a look on his face that was somewhere between utter panic and mental breakdown. True to his assessment, the camo-clad woman called Komrade Killix stood behind him, a knife-wielding hand pressed to the softest part of his throat. Beneath an unseasonable black wool cap, her dark, messy hair frizzed around her like she hadn’t brushed it in well, ever; her brown eyes were squinted in furious concentration.
I would have screamed, but I couldn’t find my voice. Birdy seemed equally as stunned and terrified, her mouth falling open as it finally dawned on her that maybe, just maybe, Icon and I had been right in our reservations about spelunking up to the house of Entwuff’s most famed isolationist.
“Why are you on my property?” Komrade Killix hissed, as Icon squirmed uneasily in her deadly grip.
“We um, just— wanted to talk to you?” Birdy choked out.
“Well, then, talk.”
“Um, it might be—easier—if you could um, not be holding a weapon to my friend’s throat?” Birdy squeaked.
“That can be arranged,” Komrade Killix replied, “depending on what you have to say.”
“Oh, great!” Birdy forced a horrified smile. “Well, um. I’m Birdy, this is Carrie, and that guy you’re about to murder is Icon!”
“Charmed,” Killix said. “Go on.”
“And well, you know Mayor Pat, right? T-the mayor of the city?”
“Of course.”
“Well, she’s retiring. And—and she’s holding a… competition, see. For the residents of Entwuff. A race, a huge race. You get to enter, and then ten teams get picked, and the winners of the race, well, they get a part of her fortune. A huge part of her fortune.”
“All very exciting, but I don’t see what it has to do with me,” Killix replied, though I noticed her grip on Icon had loosened a little.
“Well, um, you need to make teams for the race. Teams of two to five. And me and Icon and Carrie, we’re a team. And… we were just… wondering—(maybe-sort-of-kind-of-if-you-don’t-murder-us)—if you wanted t-to be on that team?”
Komrade Killix started to laugh, a hearty laugh, the sort of laugh usually only emitted by a person who’d just heard the most hilarious joke of the century. I think this might have stunned me even more than the whole knife-at-Icon’s-throat thing: Komrade Killix, showing emotion? “You… you want me on a team?” she sputtered between snorts.
“Well, um. Yes! B-because Mayor Pat said there’d be tricky clues and stuff, and you’re so…” She paused. “… smart.”
“I can’t say I disagree with you, kid, but how would you know anything about my intelligence? You’ve never even met me.” She kept on chortling, and I was pretty sure she was either going to keel over from a stitch any moment, or cut open Icon’s throat; I hadn’t yet decided on which was more likely.
Fortunately, she did neither. Just when I thought it might be a good idea to go every-man-for-himself and flee back to Birdy’s car at the base of the Hill, Komrade Killix suddenly pulled back her knife, tucking it into her belt loop. Icon flung himself as far away from her as possibly could, tripping over his shoelaces in the process and thus tumbling to the ground. He gasped sharply and, once he landed, reached up toward his throat, as if just to make extra sure it wasn’t split open and bleeding.
“You have guts, that’s for sure,” Komrade Killix said chipperly. “And I can’t say I’m not flattered. Here, why don’t you all come inside, I’ll make you some coffee, and you can tell me all about this so-called race.” She glanced down at Icon, who had yet to stand back up. “Wipe your pants off first, I don’t want any dirt tracked into my house, you hear?”
And with that, Komrade Killix brushed by us and entered the tin-roofed shack.
If you drive down Main Street until it turns into a rutted dirt road, and then you drive for some ten minutes more, so far that you’re not even totally sure you’re still in Entwuff city limits (you are), and then you turn left, onto an unmarked muddy trail, and slowly wind down it for another quarter hour or so, you’ll reach a rolling hill. I don’t know if it has an official name, but the locals all call it Stallion Hill, in part because of the wild horses that roam the pastures nearby to it, and partly after some historical figures who lived in the area a very long time ago.
If you climb up the hill, you’ll find a house. Or maybe shack is a more accurate description. It’s got a tin roof, only high-up slit windows, and rumors have it that trip-wires riddle the path up leading to the front door.
The shack was where Komrade Killix lived.
Komrade Killix was sort of an enigma around town, residing in the rural shack atop Stallion Hill for well—as far anyone was concerned, forever. Some called her a survival nut, others thought she was hiding from something—the law, probably. She only showed her face around the proper part of Entwuff once every month or so, upon which she would move around Main Street in a methodical fashion, roving from shop to shop as she assembled on each visit an identical list of wares: canned foods, bags of rice and beans, bar soap, coffee, and toilet paper. Her acquisitions she’d then dump unceremoniously into the bed of her pickup truck before driving back to Stallion Hill. If you tried to talk to her—which most people didn’t, not even the store clerks who rang up her purchases—she wouldn’t ignore you, not exactly, but her voice was always clipped and cool. She rarely smiled and never laughed.
As Birdy, Icon, and I approached Stallion Hill in Birdy’s SUV—the only car any of us owned that could handle the off-road for such a distance—suddenly my neighbor Icon didn’t seem like the worst teammate, after all.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he moaned miserably for the umpteenth time.
“I agree,” I grumbled, as Birdy parked the car at the base of the Hill. “There’s still time to turn around, you know.”
“We’re not turning around.” Birdy pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the car door, stepping out into the muggy afternoon.
“She’s going to say no,” Icon said as he, too, stepped outside; I followed suit, my senses immediately assuaged by the smell of manure and… gunpowder. Gee, that was comforting. Icon added, “She’s going to chase us away and then—OOH!” He pointed wildly at the sky. “Look, look, a pointy-beaked hawk! I haven’t seen one of those in ages!”
“Wow, maybe you can catch it and add it to your orchestra!” I snapped.
“You can’t catch them, they’re endangered,” he said with a knowing nod.
“It was a joke, nitwit—”
“Guys, no. No arguing.” Birdy shook her head. “Now, come on. Up the Hill, I’ll lead.”
On our hike up the Hill, Icon gleefully pointed out a number of other birds that were flying overhead, and I valiantly held my tongue. Birds, birds, birds. Was that all he talked about? Even if Komrade Killix didn’t end the Race before it began for us by, I don’t know, making us disappear forever for trespassing on her property, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could handle Icon for a race from here to New Woo City. That was… hundreds of miles. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. What, was he going to point out every bird from here to there, with complete taxonomy information, nesting trends, and migratory patterns? I would go crazy. Was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars really worth crazy?
… yes. Hell yes.
Alas, this was the answer I came to again and again, as finally we crested the Hill and Komrade Killix’s abode came into view.
“Careful,” I warned. “I’ve heard she has booby traps.”
Birdy rolled her eyes. “Where from, the middle school gossip committee?’
“She’s crazy,” Icon reminded. “I mean, I hate to not completely tear down everything Carrie says, but seriously, Birdy, be careful.”
Fortunately, we made it to the door without any of us being taken out by bear traps or trip-wires. As Icon and I stood hesitantly a few feet back, Birdy loudly rapped on the metal door (what kind of person had a metal door, for Woo’s sake?). When there was no answer after a solid minute, Birdy rapped again. Then again.
“I don’t think she’s home,” I said after the fourth knock.
“Her pickup truck was at the bottom of the hill,” Birdy pointed out. “And—come on, Carrie. It’s Komrade Killix. Where else would she be?”
“Um, guys—”
“Shut up, Icon,” I huffed. “I don’t want to hear about another bird.”
“No, it’s just—”
“A blue-grey-purple crested heron? A shiny hawk? I don’t care.”
“No, but—”
“Seriously, stop!”
“KOMRADE KILLIX IS HERE AND SHE HAS A KNIFE POINTED AT MY THROAT.”
… well, snap.
Both Birdy and I turned to face Icon, who wore a look on his face that was somewhere between utter panic and mental breakdown. True to his assessment, the camo-clad woman called Komrade Killix stood behind him, a knife-wielding hand pressed to the softest part of his throat. Beneath an unseasonable black wool cap, her dark, messy hair frizzed around her like she hadn’t brushed it in well, ever; her brown eyes were squinted in furious concentration.
I would have screamed, but I couldn’t find my voice. Birdy seemed equally as stunned and terrified, her mouth falling open as it finally dawned on her that maybe, just maybe, Icon and I had been right in our reservations about spelunking up to the house of Entwuff’s most famed isolationist.
“Why are you on my property?” Komrade Killix hissed, as Icon squirmed uneasily in her deadly grip.
“We um, just— wanted to talk to you?” Birdy choked out.
“Well, then, talk.”
“Um, it might be—easier—if you could um, not be holding a weapon to my friend’s throat?” Birdy squeaked.
“That can be arranged,” Komrade Killix replied, “depending on what you have to say.”
“Oh, great!” Birdy forced a horrified smile. “Well, um. I’m Birdy, this is Carrie, and that guy you’re about to murder is Icon!”
“Charmed,” Killix said. “Go on.”
“And well, you know Mayor Pat, right? T-the mayor of the city?”
“Of course.”
“Well, she’s retiring. And—and she’s holding a… competition, see. For the residents of Entwuff. A race, a huge race. You get to enter, and then ten teams get picked, and the winners of the race, well, they get a part of her fortune. A huge part of her fortune.”
“All very exciting, but I don’t see what it has to do with me,” Killix replied, though I noticed her grip on Icon had loosened a little.
“Well, um, you need to make teams for the race. Teams of two to five. And me and Icon and Carrie, we’re a team. And… we were just… wondering—(maybe-sort-of-kind-of-if-you-don’t-murder-us)—if you wanted t-to be on that team?”
Komrade Killix started to laugh, a hearty laugh, the sort of laugh usually only emitted by a person who’d just heard the most hilarious joke of the century. I think this might have stunned me even more than the whole knife-at-Icon’s-throat thing: Komrade Killix, showing emotion? “You… you want me on a team?” she sputtered between snorts.
“Well, um. Yes! B-because Mayor Pat said there’d be tricky clues and stuff, and you’re so…” She paused. “… smart.”
“I can’t say I disagree with you, kid, but how would you know anything about my intelligence? You’ve never even met me.” She kept on chortling, and I was pretty sure she was either going to keel over from a stitch any moment, or cut open Icon’s throat; I hadn’t yet decided on which was more likely.
Fortunately, she did neither. Just when I thought it might be a good idea to go every-man-for-himself and flee back to Birdy’s car at the base of the Hill, Komrade Killix suddenly pulled back her knife, tucking it into her belt loop. Icon flung himself as far away from her as possibly could, tripping over his shoelaces in the process and thus tumbling to the ground. He gasped sharply and, once he landed, reached up toward his throat, as if just to make extra sure it wasn’t split open and bleeding.
“You have guts, that’s for sure,” Komrade Killix said chipperly. “And I can’t say I’m not flattered. Here, why don’t you all come inside, I’ll make you some coffee, and you can tell me all about this so-called race.” She glanced down at Icon, who had yet to stand back up. “Wipe your pants off first, I don’t want any dirt tracked into my house, you hear?”
And with that, Komrade Killix brushed by us and entered the tin-roofed shack.
Chapter Four
Chapter Four
The climactic scene of every horror movie I’d ever watched played over in my head as Icon, Birdy, and I followed Komrade Killix inside. Here go the hearty heroes, following the perfectly nice hermitic knife-wielder into her middle-of-nowhere murder shack! This will go just perfectly for all of them, and their beloved limbs!
The interior of the shack was about what you’d expect: dark, a little musty, and cluttered. Komrade Killix immediately started up a pot of coffee and then gestured us toward the lumpy pair of sofas nearby. “Sit,” she said, not quite warmly, but probably about as warm as you’d ever get out of her.
“I think we should get out of here,” Icon murmured under his breath, refusing to sit.
“Aw, come on, she didn’t slash the knife, Icon,” Birdy whispered back, yanking him towards the couches. “She just wanted to make sure we weren’t thieves or something.”
“She tried to kill me,” he stage whispered, apparently a bit too loudly, for from across the room Killix called out:
“If I wanted to kill you, boy, then you’d be dead. Now,” she said, plopping down on one of the sofas, “this competition. Tell me about it. And why I should take part in it with you charming strangers who’ve come bursting onto my private property on what was otherwise a perfectly lovely summer afternoon.”
“Well,” Birdy said, “there’s money involved.”
“Go on.”
“A million shinies. To be split however we’d like between all members of our team.”
“Hm.” Killix considered. “… and what else?”
“That’s—what do you mean, what else?”
“Well, a million shinies to be divvied up between the winners, that’s all lovely. But if you haven’t noticed from my humble home, I’m not exactly a materialistic sort of person. So. One million shinies, that’s all well and nice. But what else?”
“I…” Birdy shared a look between Icon and me; both of us shrugged at her in return. Hey, she was the one who’d forced us up here and nearly gotten Icon’s throat flayed Sweeney Todd style. If she wanted to persuade Komrade Killix why running the Race was a super swell idea, then the onus was all on her.
An uncomfortable silence bloomed in the room, as Komrade Killix stared expectantly at Birdy, and Birdy’s mouth hung agape as she desperately racked her mind for an adequate response. I noted with a grim amusement that Icon’s gaze had settled on the high-up slit window on the far wall, on the outside of which there was a small bird’s nest. He was watching it with the sort of rapt attention most people usually reserved for, I don’t know, fireworks or the apocalypse.
Finally, after an unsettlingly long time, Komrade Killix leaned forward and smiled. “There’s nothing else, is there?”
Birdy shook her head. “Um, no, just the shinies.”
“Hm,” Killix said again, picking at her fingernails. “Hmm.” Across the room, coffee started trickling into the pot. “… okay. I’ll do it.”
“You’ll—wait, what?”
“I’ll do it,” said Killix. “The race, the mayor’s race for the million shinies.”
“I thought you just… didn’t you just say you didn’t care about shinies?”
“I don’t,” Killix confirmed. “But I always have wanted a chance to mercilessly beat down my fellow townspeople.”
“…. You… you… what?” I choked out, unable to hold my tongue any longer.
“The townspeople, girl—what, do you need your ears checked?” Killix rolled her eyes. “The lovely denizens of this hellhole you three and I call home. Entwuff. Even the name’s terrible, really, what were the founders thinking? I’ve put it up with all these years because I like my Hill, I like my house, and Mayor Pat’s let my taxes ah… slip in exchange for me keeping some of her…” Killix paused thoughtfully. “… secrets. But you say she’s retiring. And so I assume the taxman cometh. Ain’t going to have no reason to stay, am I? So might as well make out like a bandit first, and rankle the hell out of everyone who’s treated me like a pariah all these years in the process.”
I wanted to helpfully suggest that perhaps people wouldn’t treat her like a pariah if she didn’t push knives to throats of everyone who came knocking, and if she showed her face in town more than once every month or two, but I didn’t think this would help matters at all. Or it might just earn the knife pressed at my throat. Instead, I gaped at her as Birdy elbowed Icon, who apparently hadn’t heard a word the woman said because he was still gawking at the bird’s nest, cripes, in the ribs. He flinched and jumped to attention.
“What?” he asked.
“Komrade Killix has agreed to join us, isn’t that great?” Birdy said. I couldn’t tell if she genuinely thought this madwoman joining us was a good thing, or if she was lying through her teeth and was regretting her decision to come to Stallion Hill just as much as Icon and I were clearly regretting it.
“Oh uh, yeah.” Icon nodded, then whispered to her, “Nest of swallows, do you think she’d let me take a picture?”
“Rule number one!” Killix called as Icon pulled away from Birdy’s ear. “Our team will have no secrets. No whispering, no giggling, no acting like entitled teenaged cliques as do the rest of your townspeople. If we want to win this thing and stomp on the souls of the rest of the Twuffians, we have to have good communication. Understood?”
“Uh-huh,” Birdy said. “Sorry ‘bout that, he’s just—very into birds—and saw that nest up there.” She pointed at the window.
Killix followed the tip of her finger. “Oh, thanks for pointing that out!” she said. “Hadn’t noticed it—love the eggs—I know what I’m having for dinner!”
Icon let out a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and sob; he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could utter a syllable, Birdy jabbed him in the ribs again, perhaps sensing that arguing with Komrade Killix was a very poor idea. I honestly felt a little bad for him. Which was unpleasant, because cripes, what had the world come to when I was feeling bad for Icon? I thought to myself—man, what’s this, things sure have gone off the deep end when your sympathy strings are plucking for the guy whose warbler jay has woken you up hours before dawn for the past week and a half straight.
But oh how wrong I was, to think the deep end was then and there. That afternoon back at Killix’s shack, we’d hardly even entered the pool.
The climactic scene of every horror movie I’d ever watched played over in my head as Icon, Birdy, and I followed Komrade Killix inside. Here go the hearty heroes, following the perfectly nice hermitic knife-wielder into her middle-of-nowhere murder shack! This will go just perfectly for all of them, and their beloved limbs!
The interior of the shack was about what you’d expect: dark, a little musty, and cluttered. Komrade Killix immediately started up a pot of coffee and then gestured us toward the lumpy pair of sofas nearby. “Sit,” she said, not quite warmly, but probably about as warm as you’d ever get out of her.
“I think we should get out of here,” Icon murmured under his breath, refusing to sit.
“Aw, come on, she didn’t slash the knife, Icon,” Birdy whispered back, yanking him towards the couches. “She just wanted to make sure we weren’t thieves or something.”
“She tried to kill me,” he stage whispered, apparently a bit too loudly, for from across the room Killix called out:
“If I wanted to kill you, boy, then you’d be dead. Now,” she said, plopping down on one of the sofas, “this competition. Tell me about it. And why I should take part in it with you charming strangers who’ve come bursting onto my private property on what was otherwise a perfectly lovely summer afternoon.”
“Well,” Birdy said, “there’s money involved.”
“Go on.”
“A million shinies. To be split however we’d like between all members of our team.”
“Hm.” Killix considered. “… and what else?”
“That’s—what do you mean, what else?”
“Well, a million shinies to be divvied up between the winners, that’s all lovely. But if you haven’t noticed from my humble home, I’m not exactly a materialistic sort of person. So. One million shinies, that’s all well and nice. But what else?”
“I…” Birdy shared a look between Icon and me; both of us shrugged at her in return. Hey, she was the one who’d forced us up here and nearly gotten Icon’s throat flayed Sweeney Todd style. If she wanted to persuade Komrade Killix why running the Race was a super swell idea, then the onus was all on her.
An uncomfortable silence bloomed in the room, as Komrade Killix stared expectantly at Birdy, and Birdy’s mouth hung agape as she desperately racked her mind for an adequate response. I noted with a grim amusement that Icon’s gaze had settled on the high-up slit window on the far wall, on the outside of which there was a small bird’s nest. He was watching it with the sort of rapt attention most people usually reserved for, I don’t know, fireworks or the apocalypse.
Finally, after an unsettlingly long time, Komrade Killix leaned forward and smiled. “There’s nothing else, is there?”
Birdy shook her head. “Um, no, just the shinies.”
“Hm,” Killix said again, picking at her fingernails. “Hmm.” Across the room, coffee started trickling into the pot. “… okay. I’ll do it.”
“You’ll—wait, what?”
“I’ll do it,” said Killix. “The race, the mayor’s race for the million shinies.”
“I thought you just… didn’t you just say you didn’t care about shinies?”
“I don’t,” Killix confirmed. “But I always have wanted a chance to mercilessly beat down my fellow townspeople.”
“…. You… you… what?” I choked out, unable to hold my tongue any longer.
“The townspeople, girl—what, do you need your ears checked?” Killix rolled her eyes. “The lovely denizens of this hellhole you three and I call home. Entwuff. Even the name’s terrible, really, what were the founders thinking? I’ve put it up with all these years because I like my Hill, I like my house, and Mayor Pat’s let my taxes ah… slip in exchange for me keeping some of her…” Killix paused thoughtfully. “… secrets. But you say she’s retiring. And so I assume the taxman cometh. Ain’t going to have no reason to stay, am I? So might as well make out like a bandit first, and rankle the hell out of everyone who’s treated me like a pariah all these years in the process.”
I wanted to helpfully suggest that perhaps people wouldn’t treat her like a pariah if she didn’t push knives to throats of everyone who came knocking, and if she showed her face in town more than once every month or two, but I didn’t think this would help matters at all. Or it might just earn the knife pressed at my throat. Instead, I gaped at her as Birdy elbowed Icon, who apparently hadn’t heard a word the woman said because he was still gawking at the bird’s nest, cripes, in the ribs. He flinched and jumped to attention.
“What?” he asked.
“Komrade Killix has agreed to join us, isn’t that great?” Birdy said. I couldn’t tell if she genuinely thought this madwoman joining us was a good thing, or if she was lying through her teeth and was regretting her decision to come to Stallion Hill just as much as Icon and I were clearly regretting it.
“Oh uh, yeah.” Icon nodded, then whispered to her, “Nest of swallows, do you think she’d let me take a picture?”
“Rule number one!” Killix called as Icon pulled away from Birdy’s ear. “Our team will have no secrets. No whispering, no giggling, no acting like entitled teenaged cliques as do the rest of your townspeople. If we want to win this thing and stomp on the souls of the rest of the Twuffians, we have to have good communication. Understood?”
“Uh-huh,” Birdy said. “Sorry ‘bout that, he’s just—very into birds—and saw that nest up there.” She pointed at the window.
Killix followed the tip of her finger. “Oh, thanks for pointing that out!” she said. “Hadn’t noticed it—love the eggs—I know what I’m having for dinner!”
Icon let out a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and sob; he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could utter a syllable, Birdy jabbed him in the ribs again, perhaps sensing that arguing with Komrade Killix was a very poor idea. I honestly felt a little bad for him. Which was unpleasant, because cripes, what had the world come to when I was feeling bad for Icon? I thought to myself—man, what’s this, things sure have gone off the deep end when your sympathy strings are plucking for the guy whose warbler jay has woken you up hours before dawn for the past week and a half straight.
But oh how wrong I was, to think the deep end was then and there. That afternoon back at Killix’s shack, we’d hardly even entered the pool.
Chapter Five
Chapter Five
That night, to the beautiful soundtrack of Icon’s warbler jay screaming its head off in the aviary next door, I lay in bed and thought about the Race. We’d dropped off our official entry form to Chet just before Town Hall closed, and the idea that my name was on a slip of paper alongside Icon’s and Komrade-freakin’-Killix’s still sort of terrified me. We’d totally forgotten until we went to turn it in that we needed a team name, as well, and though Komrade Killix had stayed behind at the Hill and so couldn’t contribute any terrible suggestions, Icon more than made up for it.
(“Team Bird?”
“No.”
“Team Raven?”
“… no.”
“Team Falcon?”
“We’re not naming our team after a bird.”)
In the end, none of us wound up truly naming the team, however. No, that honor went to Chet himself, who was growing antsier by the moment, and when in a moment of exasperation I cried out “I just—I don’t know!”, he smiled to himself, that sort of a smile a child generally casts upon successfully thieving a cookie from the jar.
“Team ‘I Don’t Know’, perfect,” he said, penning it atop our form.
“Wait,” I said. “That—no, that’s not a suggestion, Chet, that’s not our team name—”
“Sure it is,” he said, and promptly folded our form into quarters and slipped it into the sealed entry box. “All submitted, good luck!” he trilled.
“That can’t be our team name.” Birdy gaped.
“Yes, it can,” replied Chet, standing. “Now, Town Hall is officially closed, so…” He gestured at the door.
Now, in the midnight hours, I still brooded over how, precisely, we were going to explain to Komrade Killix our team name. For some reason, I didn’t think she would find much humor in it, mostly because so far in the time I’d known her the only thing she’d seemed to delight in at all was the thought of crushing her fellow townspeople underfoot like bugs. Hell, I thought again, what has Birdy gotten me into?
Over the next week, I repeated this question in my mind—and sometimes aloud—so many times that I lost count. Especially when Icon, Birdy, and I met up with Komrade Killix at the Hill, which we did often to, in Killix’s words, “train up for the Race, you lazy slugs”.
Killix’s idea of training was similar to what I imagine an army drill sergeant would… consider wildly over-the-top. I tried to explain to her repeatedly that we were you know, allowed to use cars and stuff during the Race, and therefore running laps around the Hill—and then up and down the Hill—and then for good measure, crawling on our arms and knees through a hellishly muddy pasture beside the Hill—was incredibly unnecessary, but Killix would hear nothing of it.
“She’s a smart broad, that Mayor Pat,” she said knowingly, in the sort of tone every tin-foil hat wearing person ‘round the world would be proud of. “She’ll throw in obstacles, you just watch her. And the rest of the townspeople will flail and fail, but not us.”
“I don’t think there are going to be mud traps, though,” Birdy pointed out helpfully as she belly-slid through a slick of mud so sticky and suctiony that I was half-convinced it was in fact a quicksand in disguise.
“You never know,” the Komrade replied. “Better over-prepared than underprepared.”
“We’re not going to be able to race at all if we drown in the mud,” I grumbled.
“You don’t drown in mud, you suffocate,” Komrade Killix helpfully corrected.
“Aren’t those practically the same thing?”
“No. All forms of drowning are suffocating, but not all forms of suffocating are drowning.”
“Oh, great. Helpful, helpful stuff. I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m dead.”
**
The drawing wasn’t until noon, but Komrade Killix wanted us there at Town Hall at the crack of dawn for last minute training. I would have complained but I was up anyway, on account of the blasted warbler jay, whose mating keens had only gotten more desperate in the past few days. I stared out my window at the aviary as I combed my hair and threw a few last minute items into my duffel bag, and noted that Icon was also awake (not a surprise: how the hell did he ever sleep with that zoo just outside his window?).
He stood at the exterior of his enclosed patio, talking with a tall, blonde-haired man. That had to be Orinth, I presumed, the wild animal park worker and also the only person in the entire world whom Icon would entrust with his birds. For the briefest of moments I got a little giddy about the idea of having a full night’s sleep away from their insufferable screeching, but then I remembered that the Race probably wouldn’t allow for much sleeping in, anyway, and even if it did, Komrade Killix certainly wouldn’t. I cursed her name under my breath as I hefted my duffel over my shoulder a few minutes later and stepped out the front door, locking it behind me.
Mayor Pat had made it clear that everyone ought to leave their vehicles at home: transportation—though of what type she hadn’t specified—would be provided for us. Therefore, Birdy, Icon, and I had plans to walk to Town Hall together. As for Komrade Killix, well, we’d asked her about that, since she lived so far away; Birdy had offered to let the woman keep her pick-up at one of our houses.
But Killix had just shrugged and waved it off. “No need. I’ll jog it.”
“… jog it? But that’d take um…”
“All night,” Killix said brightly. “It’ll warm me up great—hey, maybe you guys should come, too—”
Fortunately, we’d managed to talk her out of this grand idea, but she still managed to beat us to the Town Hall. … us and everyone else. The place was deserted. And it remained that way for several hours; finally Chet showed up around nine to unlock the front doors, at which point he cast us an incredulous look.
“You know the raffle’s not until noon, right?” he asked. Then, noticing Komrade Killix amongst us, he stiffened. “I’ve told you eighty times, ma’am, we can’t do anything about the pond behind yourself going dry in summer because we can’t control the rain—”
“Oh, can it,” Komrade Killix interrupted. “I’m not here about the pond. I’m here to enter the race.”
Chet blanched, then shifted his gaze toward Icon, Birdy, and me. “She’s on your team?”
“Uh-huh!” Birdy said. “I mean, you’re the one who took our entry form, you should know that.”
“I didn’t read the form,” Chet said. “Because if I do recall, you’re the team that came loping in two minutes to close, then couldn’t decide on your team name—”
“Team name?” Komrade Killix asked. “What’s our team name?”
“You don’t want to know,” I muttered.
As the Komrade insisted that she did, indeed, want to know, Chet gave us one last pitying, disbelieving glance, then disappeared into Town Hall. True to my fears, Killix was none too pleased about our terrible moniker, but fortunately her rage was directed at Chet and not us, and we managed to convince her to burn off her agitated energy by running a last ‘Race prep’ mile (“We’ll even come with!” Birdy said, as Icon and I gasped “NO!”) instead of chasing after him to “teach that scamp manners”. (At least she didn’t make us bring our duffels with on the jog for “extra resistance weight”.)
By the time we returned from the impromptu mile-that-turned-into-three-miles-because-Killix-wouldn’t-let-us-stop run, we were no longer the only ones loitering outside Town Hall: another potential team had arrived in our absence. Dan and Ginz Pines, who lived a few streets away from Icon, Birdy, and me, along with their two teenaged children, Alyssa and Nova. And… I eyed the fifth person with them: a stranger.
When they saw us, Ginz gave a friendly wave. “You’re here bright and early just like us, huh?”
“Even brighter and earlier,” Icon grumbled, massaging at his back.
Ginz politely smiled in reply—and then her eyes fell on Komrade Killix, who was lingering a few feet back from the rest of us, and that smile promptly melted away. Funny what effect she had on people and their affability. Maybe her name should be Komrade Killjoy.
“So,” I said, trying to broach the uncomfortable silence, “you guys are entering the race?”
“Oh yes,” Ginz said, forcing cheer back into her tone. “We thought it would be a good family bonding experience. Right, Dan?”
Dan shrugged. “Sure.”
“And the children are so excited!” she went on.
I glanced at the kids, who did not look excited at all. In fact, they looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else but here: the dentist, the SATs… the morgue. Nova was listening to his iPod and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as if he still couldn’t quite believe he was here. Alyssa was sitting on the steps of Town Hall and sketching angrily in a notebook, the slashes of her pencil so furious I was surprised the pages weren’t tearing with each stroke.
“Anyway,” Ginz prattled on, “my brother Jay was coming by for a visit this week already, so we thought we’d include him, too.” She nodded at the stranger, who gave a tepid wave.
“Does he live in Entwuff?” Birdy asked.
“Ah, no, but we asked Mayor Pat, and she said it should be alright.”
“That sounds pretty sketchy,” Komrade Killix piped in, stepping nearer to the Pines and us.
“Well, if Mayor Pat thinks it’s fine, I don’t see how it’s sketchy.” All of the smile in Ginz’s voice was gone; now she seemed a little agitated. Ah, Komrade Killix, inspiring more and more goodwill by the minute. Taking a step closer to Dan, Ginz said, “Well. We’re going to go wait in Town Hall where there’s air conditioning, so…”
“I thought you said you wanted to wait out here because it’s nice weather, dear,” Dan said flatly.
“Oh, did I?” She glowered at him, caught herself, straightened, and then smoothly went on, “I’ve changed my mind. Inside. Let’s go.”
And so as the Pines family disappeared into Town Hall, we were left alone once more.
“I know you want to crush all these people, Komrade,” I said after they were gone, “but seriously, I don’t think we need to make enemies before the Race even starts.”
“But those are the best sorts of enemies,” she responded. “Because they’re the kind you most want to beat.”
“I suppose… but then won’t they also want to most beat us?”
“So what?” Killix shrugged. “They won’t be able to, girl. Trust me—no one is else is nearly as prepared as us. Once this Race gets underway, we’ll leave them in our dust. They’ll choke on it.”
It didn’t seem to occur to Komrade Killix, then, that maybe we would be the ones choking.
That night, to the beautiful soundtrack of Icon’s warbler jay screaming its head off in the aviary next door, I lay in bed and thought about the Race. We’d dropped off our official entry form to Chet just before Town Hall closed, and the idea that my name was on a slip of paper alongside Icon’s and Komrade-freakin’-Killix’s still sort of terrified me. We’d totally forgotten until we went to turn it in that we needed a team name, as well, and though Komrade Killix had stayed behind at the Hill and so couldn’t contribute any terrible suggestions, Icon more than made up for it.
(“Team Bird?”
“No.”
“Team Raven?”
“… no.”
“Team Falcon?”
“We’re not naming our team after a bird.”)
In the end, none of us wound up truly naming the team, however. No, that honor went to Chet himself, who was growing antsier by the moment, and when in a moment of exasperation I cried out “I just—I don’t know!”, he smiled to himself, that sort of a smile a child generally casts upon successfully thieving a cookie from the jar.
“Team ‘I Don’t Know’, perfect,” he said, penning it atop our form.
“Wait,” I said. “That—no, that’s not a suggestion, Chet, that’s not our team name—”
“Sure it is,” he said, and promptly folded our form into quarters and slipped it into the sealed entry box. “All submitted, good luck!” he trilled.
“That can’t be our team name.” Birdy gaped.
“Yes, it can,” replied Chet, standing. “Now, Town Hall is officially closed, so…” He gestured at the door.
Now, in the midnight hours, I still brooded over how, precisely, we were going to explain to Komrade Killix our team name. For some reason, I didn’t think she would find much humor in it, mostly because so far in the time I’d known her the only thing she’d seemed to delight in at all was the thought of crushing her fellow townspeople underfoot like bugs. Hell, I thought again, what has Birdy gotten me into?
Over the next week, I repeated this question in my mind—and sometimes aloud—so many times that I lost count. Especially when Icon, Birdy, and I met up with Komrade Killix at the Hill, which we did often to, in Killix’s words, “train up for the Race, you lazy slugs”.
Killix’s idea of training was similar to what I imagine an army drill sergeant would… consider wildly over-the-top. I tried to explain to her repeatedly that we were you know, allowed to use cars and stuff during the Race, and therefore running laps around the Hill—and then up and down the Hill—and then for good measure, crawling on our arms and knees through a hellishly muddy pasture beside the Hill—was incredibly unnecessary, but Killix would hear nothing of it.
“She’s a smart broad, that Mayor Pat,” she said knowingly, in the sort of tone every tin-foil hat wearing person ‘round the world would be proud of. “She’ll throw in obstacles, you just watch her. And the rest of the townspeople will flail and fail, but not us.”
“I don’t think there are going to be mud traps, though,” Birdy pointed out helpfully as she belly-slid through a slick of mud so sticky and suctiony that I was half-convinced it was in fact a quicksand in disguise.
“You never know,” the Komrade replied. “Better over-prepared than underprepared.”
“We’re not going to be able to race at all if we drown in the mud,” I grumbled.
“You don’t drown in mud, you suffocate,” Komrade Killix helpfully corrected.
“Aren’t those practically the same thing?”
“No. All forms of drowning are suffocating, but not all forms of suffocating are drowning.”
“Oh, great. Helpful, helpful stuff. I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m dead.”
**
The drawing wasn’t until noon, but Komrade Killix wanted us there at Town Hall at the crack of dawn for last minute training. I would have complained but I was up anyway, on account of the blasted warbler jay, whose mating keens had only gotten more desperate in the past few days. I stared out my window at the aviary as I combed my hair and threw a few last minute items into my duffel bag, and noted that Icon was also awake (not a surprise: how the hell did he ever sleep with that zoo just outside his window?).
He stood at the exterior of his enclosed patio, talking with a tall, blonde-haired man. That had to be Orinth, I presumed, the wild animal park worker and also the only person in the entire world whom Icon would entrust with his birds. For the briefest of moments I got a little giddy about the idea of having a full night’s sleep away from their insufferable screeching, but then I remembered that the Race probably wouldn’t allow for much sleeping in, anyway, and even if it did, Komrade Killix certainly wouldn’t. I cursed her name under my breath as I hefted my duffel over my shoulder a few minutes later and stepped out the front door, locking it behind me.
Mayor Pat had made it clear that everyone ought to leave their vehicles at home: transportation—though of what type she hadn’t specified—would be provided for us. Therefore, Birdy, Icon, and I had plans to walk to Town Hall together. As for Komrade Killix, well, we’d asked her about that, since she lived so far away; Birdy had offered to let the woman keep her pick-up at one of our houses.
But Killix had just shrugged and waved it off. “No need. I’ll jog it.”
“… jog it? But that’d take um…”
“All night,” Killix said brightly. “It’ll warm me up great—hey, maybe you guys should come, too—”
Fortunately, we’d managed to talk her out of this grand idea, but she still managed to beat us to the Town Hall. … us and everyone else. The place was deserted. And it remained that way for several hours; finally Chet showed up around nine to unlock the front doors, at which point he cast us an incredulous look.
“You know the raffle’s not until noon, right?” he asked. Then, noticing Komrade Killix amongst us, he stiffened. “I’ve told you eighty times, ma’am, we can’t do anything about the pond behind yourself going dry in summer because we can’t control the rain—”
“Oh, can it,” Komrade Killix interrupted. “I’m not here about the pond. I’m here to enter the race.”
Chet blanched, then shifted his gaze toward Icon, Birdy, and me. “She’s on your team?”
“Uh-huh!” Birdy said. “I mean, you’re the one who took our entry form, you should know that.”
“I didn’t read the form,” Chet said. “Because if I do recall, you’re the team that came loping in two minutes to close, then couldn’t decide on your team name—”
“Team name?” Komrade Killix asked. “What’s our team name?”
“You don’t want to know,” I muttered.
As the Komrade insisted that she did, indeed, want to know, Chet gave us one last pitying, disbelieving glance, then disappeared into Town Hall. True to my fears, Killix was none too pleased about our terrible moniker, but fortunately her rage was directed at Chet and not us, and we managed to convince her to burn off her agitated energy by running a last ‘Race prep’ mile (“We’ll even come with!” Birdy said, as Icon and I gasped “NO!”) instead of chasing after him to “teach that scamp manners”. (At least she didn’t make us bring our duffels with on the jog for “extra resistance weight”.)
By the time we returned from the impromptu mile-that-turned-into-three-miles-because-Killix-wouldn’t-let-us-stop run, we were no longer the only ones loitering outside Town Hall: another potential team had arrived in our absence. Dan and Ginz Pines, who lived a few streets away from Icon, Birdy, and me, along with their two teenaged children, Alyssa and Nova. And… I eyed the fifth person with them: a stranger.
When they saw us, Ginz gave a friendly wave. “You’re here bright and early just like us, huh?”
“Even brighter and earlier,” Icon grumbled, massaging at his back.
Ginz politely smiled in reply—and then her eyes fell on Komrade Killix, who was lingering a few feet back from the rest of us, and that smile promptly melted away. Funny what effect she had on people and their affability. Maybe her name should be Komrade Killjoy.
“So,” I said, trying to broach the uncomfortable silence, “you guys are entering the race?”
“Oh yes,” Ginz said, forcing cheer back into her tone. “We thought it would be a good family bonding experience. Right, Dan?”
Dan shrugged. “Sure.”
“And the children are so excited!” she went on.
I glanced at the kids, who did not look excited at all. In fact, they looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else but here: the dentist, the SATs… the morgue. Nova was listening to his iPod and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as if he still couldn’t quite believe he was here. Alyssa was sitting on the steps of Town Hall and sketching angrily in a notebook, the slashes of her pencil so furious I was surprised the pages weren’t tearing with each stroke.
“Anyway,” Ginz prattled on, “my brother Jay was coming by for a visit this week already, so we thought we’d include him, too.” She nodded at the stranger, who gave a tepid wave.
“Does he live in Entwuff?” Birdy asked.
“Ah, no, but we asked Mayor Pat, and she said it should be alright.”
“That sounds pretty sketchy,” Komrade Killix piped in, stepping nearer to the Pines and us.
“Well, if Mayor Pat thinks it’s fine, I don’t see how it’s sketchy.” All of the smile in Ginz’s voice was gone; now she seemed a little agitated. Ah, Komrade Killix, inspiring more and more goodwill by the minute. Taking a step closer to Dan, Ginz said, “Well. We’re going to go wait in Town Hall where there’s air conditioning, so…”
“I thought you said you wanted to wait out here because it’s nice weather, dear,” Dan said flatly.
“Oh, did I?” She glowered at him, caught herself, straightened, and then smoothly went on, “I’ve changed my mind. Inside. Let’s go.”
And so as the Pines family disappeared into Town Hall, we were left alone once more.
“I know you want to crush all these people, Komrade,” I said after they were gone, “but seriously, I don’t think we need to make enemies before the Race even starts.”
“But those are the best sorts of enemies,” she responded. “Because they’re the kind you most want to beat.”
“I suppose… but then won’t they also want to most beat us?”
“So what?” Killix shrugged. “They won’t be able to, girl. Trust me—no one is else is nearly as prepared as us. Once this Race gets underway, we’ll leave them in our dust. They’ll choke on it.”
It didn’t seem to occur to Komrade Killix, then, that maybe we would be the ones choking.
Chapter Six
Chapter Six
The others teams arrived slowly over the next few hours, and by noontime, the area surrounding Town Hall was thick with Twuffians—a large majority of whom gaped at Birdy, Icon, and me like we were absolutely insane when they saw Komrade Killix and realized, from the way she was interacting with us, that she was on our team. If Killix noticed the gazes, she commented nothing of them. She was probably used to it, I realized, which then made me a little sad, which in turn made me angry, because egads, this woman was going to make my life hell for the immediate future if our team got picked, I didn’t need to feel bad for her!
I didn’t feel bad at all for Icon anymore, though, which was a plus. He’d pretty much made that a non-issue by his constant fretting about his birds as we waited. His voice was like fire to my ears by the time the drawing came around.
“Do you think they’re okay?” he asked about forty times. Maybe fifty. Maybe five hundred.
“Sure, Orinth is a pro,” Birdy replied.
“But what if there’s a problem?”
“The he can handle it.”
“But what if he can’t?”
“He can, it’ll be fine.”
“But what if he can’t?”
“Then we’ll have a cook-out when we get home,” Komrade Killix grumbled. “Now focus, boy.”
Icon did not focus. Not that I did, either, really, as I sized up our competition. It looked as if nearly everyone in town had assembled some sort of team, which made my stomach do a flip. What if, after all of this, we weren’t even picked? True, that’d mean not having to spend any more time around Killix and Icon, but it also would mean no chance at the two hundred fifty thousand shinies. And I wanted those shinies, cripes, how I wanted them. I imagined reaching the finish line and letting them drip through my fingers, the metal cool against my skin. A smile broke across my face. We would win the raffle. We had to!
When Mayor Pat emerged from within Town Hall—she must have snuck in the back entrance—a few minutes after noon, a hush fell upon the crowd. Everyone’s eyes latched upon the woman like drunkards onto the night’s first wine, mine included. Chet hustled out beside her and thrust a cordless mic in her hands before scurrying back inside. Once he was gone, Mayor Pat turned to address the crowd.
“Welcome, welcome! My, I’m pleased to see such a turnout! Now, since I know you all must be just dripping with excitement, I won’t stretch this out. Chet’s gone inside to fetch the bucket full of slips. Once he returns, we’ll start the drawing. Ten teams will be called, by the name you submitted on your entry form. If you’re called, please make your way up these steps, and Chet will escort you inside, where you’ll be briefed on last minute details before the Race gets underway. If you’re not called, there will be a consolation prize of a barbeque lunch down the street at Lemon Park, catered by Zylaa, a.k.a., the lovely owner of The Pit, Entwuff’s most popular—and only—BBQ joint!”
“A million shinies, or a free barbeque, that seems fair,” grumbled somebody nearby to me. I glanced at them and found Draco, of overgrown cabbages fame; he was standing alongside… cripes, was that Coaster? Indeed, it was, and from the way they were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and sharing a bemused look, it was apparent to me that they made up another team. So it seemed that Birdy, Icon, Killix, and I weren’t the only ones mad enough to arrange a team of people who didn’t much like each other. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
At the top of the steps, Mayor Pat waited in silence for a few moments as the town stared on, before being joined once more by Chet, who was now toting an overloaded plastic bucket that looked like it had been purloined from its previous life in the janitor’s closet. Now instead of a mop, it was brimming with folded paper slips. Chet plunked it down beside the mayor.
“Thank you!” She beamed at him. “Now, without further ado, I shall begin the raffle. Chet’s shaken the bucket up quite heartily, so the entry slips should be nicely mixed. Remember, we’re all neighbors, so even if you don’t win, don’t despair: congratulate your winning friends and be happy for them!” (Next to me, Killix sniggered as if that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.) “So… here it goes.”
She plunged her hand in the bucket; the tension in the crowd was so thick that I’m not even sure Killix could have cut it with her knife. (My eyes drifted to the duffel my teammate wore slung over her shoulder, and suddenly it dawned on me that perhaps I should have verified she hadn’t brought with her any weapons.) For what seemed like ages, Mayor Pat let her fingers trail over the tightly folded forms, stroking them like puppies, until finally she plucked one out. She slowly, carefully, unfolded it.
“So,” she called, “our first winner is… Team Family!”
Killix sniggered again and muttered something about how much of “saccharine putzes” a team would have to be to pick that name, and I flicked my eyes around the crowd, looking for said putzes. I almost grimaced when finally I found them: the Pines family, who’d apparently emerged from Town Hall at some point since huffing away from us a few hours ago. After Ginz high-fived her still-bored looking husband, the family started to make their way up to the steps, the kid trailing lazily behind the adults, their faces etched with a healthy mix of boredom and aggravation. Oh, great, the only team that Killix had already managed to makes enemies of2 were guaranteed to be in the Race—and thus were guaranteed to be our competition if we made it into the Race.
At the top of the steps, Mayor Pat set a friendly hand on Ginz’s shoulder. “Ah, the Pines!” the mayor chirped enthusiastically. “What a wonderful first team! Now, if you’ll make your way inside… I shall pick our second winners!” Ginz and her family obliged, and once they were gone, Pat once more went to rustling through the bucket. “The second team is… Team Awesome-Face!”
“Yes!” came a shout from amongst the horde of Twuffians.
Everyone darted their eyes in the direction of the voice, and discovered Maddy Snyder, who was standing alongside her sibling, Lizzie, and another grinning teenager. I knew of Maddy and Lizzie only because they’d gone on a mailbox-smashing spree alongside some other high schoolers last winter break, and had then been lugged around town by their parents to apologize to everybody after being apprehended by Entwuff’s lone cop, Malak. As for the third among them, well, I didn’t recognize the kid, but from the way they were high-fiving Maddy, I assumed it was another hooligan teammate.
I furrowed my brow as I watched the three of them sashay up to the steps, wondering briefly how the hell they’d even entered this thing. Mayor Pat had made it clear that at least one member of each team had to be eighteen, and that anyone under eighteen needed parental permission—neither of which I imagined applied to this group. My questions, however, were answered for me, when upon reaching Mayor Pat, Maddy over-exuberantly tried to fist bump the woman and cried, “Best eighteenth birthday present ever!”
“Oh, happy birthday,” Mayor Pat said with a tepid smile. Then, to Lizzie and the other teenager: “Elizabeth, Selm? Do you two have your permission slips?”
“Uh-huh,” they said nearly in unison, digging crumpled forms out from their pockets and thrusting them at Mayor Pat. The mayor accepted them as one might take into hand a red-hot iron. “Hm,” said the mayor. “Those parental signatures—you two wouldn’t have forged anything, would you have?”
“Of course not!” gasped the third teenager, whom I supposed must be Selm.
Clearly not accepting this declaration on face value, Mayor Pat glanced back out at the crowd, as if searching it for the aforementioned parents, but neither Maddy’s parents nor Selm’s parents were around. Pat bit her lip and hesitantly handed the wrinkled permission slips over to Chet, who’d returned from escorting the Pines’ inside.
“Well,” the mayor said, “I… suppose I shall just accept your word for it, then. If you’ll follow Chet in, then I’ll go on to team number three!”
Team number three, dubbed Team Bazooka-Raven (… the hell?), was… populated by the other teenagers who’d gone along mailbox bashing, cripes, what ever happened to karma? At least these three—Kristy, Tiger, and Sporty—were accompanied by adults: Kristy’s mother, Cassie, who worked at the local bakery, and her coworker-turned-fiancé Riel. Not that the three girls seemed to want anything to do with said adults; even when Cassie tried to embrace her daughter in a celebration hug, the girl pushed the woman away. Woo, were Lizzie, Selm, and Maddy the only team who actually liked each other?
Team four, dubbed simply Cabbages!, also did not like each other—that would be Draco and Coaster, who at the very least seemed enthused about not being relegated to the loser’s barbecue. Nevertheless, they were already shoving at each other as they made their way toward the steps, nominally because Draco “accidentally” stepped on Coaster’s shoelaces, but I was guessing they mostly just wanted to beat each other up.
“They won’t make it far at all,” Komrade Killix sniffed. “Look at that team rapport—nonexistent, not like us, nope.” She clapped Icon jovially on the back, which just caused him to flinch. It’d been a week, but I still don’t think he’d forgiven her for the knife she’d pressed to his throat… nor the marathon sessions of mud bog wading.
As Draco and Coaster were escorted into Town Hall, and Mayor Pat went fishing back into the bucket for the fifth team, my palms started to sweat. The drawing was nearly halfway through, and still we hadn’t been called. Our chances were getting slimmer by the minute. Still I wouldn’t dare seriously entertain the fact that our slip wouldn’t get plucked from that bucket eventually—and yet as team five was called (Team Phantom, comprised of sisters Celestial and Pixie, who lived just down the street from Birdy, Icon, and me) and then team six (The Rum Runners, made up of Hunty and Fraze, who owned Entwuff’s one and only pub), I couldn’t deny that I was getting antsy.
Over halfway, now, and still nothing.
“Don’t worry,” Killix said, as if sensing my growing apprehension. “We’ll win, it’s just a matter of time.”
“I hope so,” I muttered in return.
2Unbeknownst to me, Killix had already made enemies with a second team (the eventual ninth team) while Birdy, Icon, and I weren't paying attention during the last minutes leading up to the raffle, after she'd cheerily remarked to them that their matching T-shirts were so pathetic that they made her wish she'd eaten breakfast so she could throw up on them to properly display her saccharine revulsion.
The others teams arrived slowly over the next few hours, and by noontime, the area surrounding Town Hall was thick with Twuffians—a large majority of whom gaped at Birdy, Icon, and me like we were absolutely insane when they saw Komrade Killix and realized, from the way she was interacting with us, that she was on our team. If Killix noticed the gazes, she commented nothing of them. She was probably used to it, I realized, which then made me a little sad, which in turn made me angry, because egads, this woman was going to make my life hell for the immediate future if our team got picked, I didn’t need to feel bad for her!
I didn’t feel bad at all for Icon anymore, though, which was a plus. He’d pretty much made that a non-issue by his constant fretting about his birds as we waited. His voice was like fire to my ears by the time the drawing came around.
“Do you think they’re okay?” he asked about forty times. Maybe fifty. Maybe five hundred.
“Sure, Orinth is a pro,” Birdy replied.
“But what if there’s a problem?”
“The he can handle it.”
“But what if he can’t?”
“He can, it’ll be fine.”
“But what if he can’t?”
“Then we’ll have a cook-out when we get home,” Komrade Killix grumbled. “Now focus, boy.”
Icon did not focus. Not that I did, either, really, as I sized up our competition. It looked as if nearly everyone in town had assembled some sort of team, which made my stomach do a flip. What if, after all of this, we weren’t even picked? True, that’d mean not having to spend any more time around Killix and Icon, but it also would mean no chance at the two hundred fifty thousand shinies. And I wanted those shinies, cripes, how I wanted them. I imagined reaching the finish line and letting them drip through my fingers, the metal cool against my skin. A smile broke across my face. We would win the raffle. We had to!
When Mayor Pat emerged from within Town Hall—she must have snuck in the back entrance—a few minutes after noon, a hush fell upon the crowd. Everyone’s eyes latched upon the woman like drunkards onto the night’s first wine, mine included. Chet hustled out beside her and thrust a cordless mic in her hands before scurrying back inside. Once he was gone, Mayor Pat turned to address the crowd.
“Welcome, welcome! My, I’m pleased to see such a turnout! Now, since I know you all must be just dripping with excitement, I won’t stretch this out. Chet’s gone inside to fetch the bucket full of slips. Once he returns, we’ll start the drawing. Ten teams will be called, by the name you submitted on your entry form. If you’re called, please make your way up these steps, and Chet will escort you inside, where you’ll be briefed on last minute details before the Race gets underway. If you’re not called, there will be a consolation prize of a barbeque lunch down the street at Lemon Park, catered by Zylaa, a.k.a., the lovely owner of The Pit, Entwuff’s most popular—and only—BBQ joint!”
“A million shinies, or a free barbeque, that seems fair,” grumbled somebody nearby to me. I glanced at them and found Draco, of overgrown cabbages fame; he was standing alongside… cripes, was that Coaster? Indeed, it was, and from the way they were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and sharing a bemused look, it was apparent to me that they made up another team. So it seemed that Birdy, Icon, Killix, and I weren’t the only ones mad enough to arrange a team of people who didn’t much like each other. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
At the top of the steps, Mayor Pat waited in silence for a few moments as the town stared on, before being joined once more by Chet, who was now toting an overloaded plastic bucket that looked like it had been purloined from its previous life in the janitor’s closet. Now instead of a mop, it was brimming with folded paper slips. Chet plunked it down beside the mayor.
“Thank you!” She beamed at him. “Now, without further ado, I shall begin the raffle. Chet’s shaken the bucket up quite heartily, so the entry slips should be nicely mixed. Remember, we’re all neighbors, so even if you don’t win, don’t despair: congratulate your winning friends and be happy for them!” (Next to me, Killix sniggered as if that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.) “So… here it goes.”
She plunged her hand in the bucket; the tension in the crowd was so thick that I’m not even sure Killix could have cut it with her knife. (My eyes drifted to the duffel my teammate wore slung over her shoulder, and suddenly it dawned on me that perhaps I should have verified she hadn’t brought with her any weapons.) For what seemed like ages, Mayor Pat let her fingers trail over the tightly folded forms, stroking them like puppies, until finally she plucked one out. She slowly, carefully, unfolded it.
“So,” she called, “our first winner is… Team Family!”
Killix sniggered again and muttered something about how much of “saccharine putzes” a team would have to be to pick that name, and I flicked my eyes around the crowd, looking for said putzes. I almost grimaced when finally I found them: the Pines family, who’d apparently emerged from Town Hall at some point since huffing away from us a few hours ago. After Ginz high-fived her still-bored looking husband, the family started to make their way up to the steps, the kid trailing lazily behind the adults, their faces etched with a healthy mix of boredom and aggravation. Oh, great, the only team that Killix had already managed to makes enemies of2 were guaranteed to be in the Race—and thus were guaranteed to be our competition if we made it into the Race.
At the top of the steps, Mayor Pat set a friendly hand on Ginz’s shoulder. “Ah, the Pines!” the mayor chirped enthusiastically. “What a wonderful first team! Now, if you’ll make your way inside… I shall pick our second winners!” Ginz and her family obliged, and once they were gone, Pat once more went to rustling through the bucket. “The second team is… Team Awesome-Face!”
“Yes!” came a shout from amongst the horde of Twuffians.
Everyone darted their eyes in the direction of the voice, and discovered Maddy Snyder, who was standing alongside her sibling, Lizzie, and another grinning teenager. I knew of Maddy and Lizzie only because they’d gone on a mailbox-smashing spree alongside some other high schoolers last winter break, and had then been lugged around town by their parents to apologize to everybody after being apprehended by Entwuff’s lone cop, Malak. As for the third among them, well, I didn’t recognize the kid, but from the way they were high-fiving Maddy, I assumed it was another hooligan teammate.
I furrowed my brow as I watched the three of them sashay up to the steps, wondering briefly how the hell they’d even entered this thing. Mayor Pat had made it clear that at least one member of each team had to be eighteen, and that anyone under eighteen needed parental permission—neither of which I imagined applied to this group. My questions, however, were answered for me, when upon reaching Mayor Pat, Maddy over-exuberantly tried to fist bump the woman and cried, “Best eighteenth birthday present ever!”
“Oh, happy birthday,” Mayor Pat said with a tepid smile. Then, to Lizzie and the other teenager: “Elizabeth, Selm? Do you two have your permission slips?”
“Uh-huh,” they said nearly in unison, digging crumpled forms out from their pockets and thrusting them at Mayor Pat. The mayor accepted them as one might take into hand a red-hot iron. “Hm,” said the mayor. “Those parental signatures—you two wouldn’t have forged anything, would you have?”
“Of course not!” gasped the third teenager, whom I supposed must be Selm.
Clearly not accepting this declaration on face value, Mayor Pat glanced back out at the crowd, as if searching it for the aforementioned parents, but neither Maddy’s parents nor Selm’s parents were around. Pat bit her lip and hesitantly handed the wrinkled permission slips over to Chet, who’d returned from escorting the Pines’ inside.
“Well,” the mayor said, “I… suppose I shall just accept your word for it, then. If you’ll follow Chet in, then I’ll go on to team number three!”
Team number three, dubbed Team Bazooka-Raven (… the hell?), was… populated by the other teenagers who’d gone along mailbox bashing, cripes, what ever happened to karma? At least these three—Kristy, Tiger, and Sporty—were accompanied by adults: Kristy’s mother, Cassie, who worked at the local bakery, and her coworker-turned-fiancé Riel. Not that the three girls seemed to want anything to do with said adults; even when Cassie tried to embrace her daughter in a celebration hug, the girl pushed the woman away. Woo, were Lizzie, Selm, and Maddy the only team who actually liked each other?
Team four, dubbed simply Cabbages!, also did not like each other—that would be Draco and Coaster, who at the very least seemed enthused about not being relegated to the loser’s barbecue. Nevertheless, they were already shoving at each other as they made their way toward the steps, nominally because Draco “accidentally” stepped on Coaster’s shoelaces, but I was guessing they mostly just wanted to beat each other up.
“They won’t make it far at all,” Komrade Killix sniffed. “Look at that team rapport—nonexistent, not like us, nope.” She clapped Icon jovially on the back, which just caused him to flinch. It’d been a week, but I still don’t think he’d forgiven her for the knife she’d pressed to his throat… nor the marathon sessions of mud bog wading.
As Draco and Coaster were escorted into Town Hall, and Mayor Pat went fishing back into the bucket for the fifth team, my palms started to sweat. The drawing was nearly halfway through, and still we hadn’t been called. Our chances were getting slimmer by the minute. Still I wouldn’t dare seriously entertain the fact that our slip wouldn’t get plucked from that bucket eventually—and yet as team five was called (Team Phantom, comprised of sisters Celestial and Pixie, who lived just down the street from Birdy, Icon, and me) and then team six (The Rum Runners, made up of Hunty and Fraze, who owned Entwuff’s one and only pub), I couldn’t deny that I was getting antsy.
Over halfway, now, and still nothing.
“Don’t worry,” Killix said, as if sensing my growing apprehension. “We’ll win, it’s just a matter of time.”
“I hope so,” I muttered in return.
2Unbeknownst to me, Killix had already made enemies with a second team (the eventual ninth team) while Birdy, Icon, and I weren't paying attention during the last minutes leading up to the raffle, after she'd cheerily remarked to them that their matching T-shirts were so pathetic that they made her wish she'd eaten breakfast so she could throw up on them to properly display her saccharine revulsion.
